Hannay sees the “queer other side which gossip has spoken of as not unknown in the German army”. The story focuses on traditional virtues: manliness, courage in the face of impossible odds loyalty and camaraderie. There is a suggestion that Stumm is gay: despite being “a perfect mountain of a man…with shoulders on him like a shorthorn bull”, he has “a perverted taste for delicate things”. Of course there is an element of jingoism: “We are the only race on earth that can produce men capable of getting inside the skin of remote peoples”. He makes many sweeping generalisations : “Only the Jew can get outside himself” “That is the weakness of the German” “All African people are alike in one thing: they can go mad” “Islam is a fighting creed”. Racial stereotypes abound: the Germans are always “the Boche”, even “Brother Boche”.

There are issues with the language which many 21 st century readers will no doubt see as racist. The plot falters and there is rather too much detail. Hannay’s journey across Europe becomes hard to follow geographically and betrays, perhaps, the haphazard way in which it was written. The plot depends on coincidence and unlikely events: Hannay’s meeting with Peter Pienaar, not once, but twice the dangerous Colonel Stumm leaving an important map just where Hannay can steal it.Īlso there are only two female characters who are rather two dimensional: a simple German peasant woman who nurses Hannay through a bout of malaria, and the mysterious Hilda von Einem with hypnotic powers and steely resolve who almost bewitches him. It is what we would call a ripping yarn: an exciting spy thriller with exotic locations and mysterious characters. En route they meet the dangerous Colonel Stumm, Hilda von Einem, a mysterious femme fatale, and the ‘Companions of Rosy Hours’. Having contacted the Germans, they embark on a journey which takes them to Constantinople via Germany and the Essen Barges on the Danube. Hannay poses as a disgruntled Boer in Lisbon and meets an old friend, Peter Pienaar, a big-game hunter. They agree to rendezvous at Constantinople in 2 months.

He agrees and recruits his friend, Sandy Arbuthnot (a soldier and Orientalist) and an American, John Blenkiron. He is asked to sabotage an international Muslim jihad against the Empire, funded by the Germans. Richard Hannay, recovering from wounds sustained at Loos, is called to the Foreign Office. Responses were very mixed! Some thought the later novels inferior to the first, The Thirty-Nine Steps (1915), others thought them a rollicking read! This month we have also read the Richard Hannay novels by John Buchan.

Greenmantle by john buchan